企业如何重返实体经济?——基于高铁通车的一个经验证据

How can Firms Return to the Real Economy?An Empirical Evidence from the Opening of High-Speed Rail

大量企业选择将资金投向金融市场而非实体产业的重要原因之一在于不完全市场下的投融资障碍。本文研究发现,高铁通车能抑制企业金融资产配置,且主要抑制企业的长期金融资产配置而非短期金融资产配置,从而降低企业风险,提高企业长短期绩效。机制分析发现,高铁通车通过增加实体投资机会和减少融资摩擦两条路径推动企业重返实体经济。进一步分析发现,高铁通车对企业金融资产配置的抑制作用主要存在于投资机会较少、融资约束较高、所处地区初始交通禀赋较差的企业中。本文研究既从完善交通基础设施方面为推动企业重返实体经济提供了一个可能的方案,也从金融投资与实业发展的视角丰富了高铁通车经济外部性的研究,为建设全国统一大市场、构建“以国内大循环为主体”的双循环发展格局提供了理论参考。

China’s economic development has slowed down since entering the new normal of the economy.Meanwhile,the escalating trade war and the spreading of COVID-19 have made the real economy even more depressed.How to stimulate the real economy has become a widespread concern from all walks of life.However,the reality is that a large number of non-financial firms have joined the financial market to obtain more profits.According to statistics,the average financial assets investment of listed companies in the non-real estate industry and non-financial industry in 2000 and 2018 was 110 million yuan and 767 million yuan,accounting for 14.34% and 16.60% of net assets,respectively,and the profits generated by them were as high as 21.03% and 27.94% of the firms’ total profits.The “financialization” of real entities has evolved into a significant form in our economic society.However,existing studies have found that firms’ financial assets allocation can crowd out their leading business investment,reduce investment in innovation and inhibit equipment upgrades,thus lowering firms’ performance,increasing firms’ risk,and even affecting the stability of the whole financial system.Therefore,how to promote the return to the real economy has become a widespread concern.Existing research points out that the changing and increasingly complex business environment makes companies hold more liquid financial assets to cope with possible future funding needs.The persistently lower return on physical investment than on financial investment has induced many non-financial firms to join the financial market,even to the extent of squeezing out real entities’ investment to increase financial asset allocation.The long-standing financial inhibition and credit discrimination have made some firms face severe financial discrimination.In contrast,others enjoy much financial support,resulting in the “real intermediaries” phenomenon in the form of shadow banks,further encouraging financial asset allocation but also laying the hidden financial risk.In essence,whether it is the “reservoir” motive,“investment substitution” motive,or “real intermediation” theory pointed out by existing research,all of them are the results of the investment and financing barriers in incomplete markets.Therefore,to bring enterprises back to the real economy,we must remove the investment and financing barriers.Existing research shows that local protectionism,geographical distance,and information asymmetry can increase investment and financing barriers.High-speed railway(HSR),a large-scale transportation infrastructure construction,can break through the long-distance barrier and reduce friction in the investment and financing market.On the one hand,the time-space compression effect of HSR can break market segmentation,broaden the geographical scope of firms’ investment,and provide more nonlocal physical investment opportunities for firms.Meanwhile,the opening of HSR can promote the flow of various factors,optimize firms’ resource allocation,improve their income from physical investment,and narrow the income gap between financial investment and physical investment.On the other hand,the opening of HSR can promote the exchange of economic entities between different regions,alleviating firms’ information asymmetry and agency problems,thus reducing firms’ financing friction,inhibiting the mismatch of financial resources and promoting of the real economy.Thus,the opening HSR can reduce firms’ investment and financing frictions,providing a good point cut for exploring how to promote firms’ return to the real economy.Based on the mega-scale transportation infrastructure construction undertaken in China,this paper sets up a time-varying differences-in-differences model,uses the data of all A-share listed companies from 2007~2018,and examines whether the opening of HSR can drive firms back into the real economy.The benchmarking results reveal that the opening of HSR can inhibit firms’ financial asset allocation and mainly inhibits firms’ long-term financial asset allocation rather than short-term financial asset allocation,thus reducing firms’ risk and improving firms’ long-term and short-term performance.Mechanism analysis shows that the opening of HSR can promote firms’ return to the real economy by increasing investment opportunities in the real economy and reducing financing friction.Further analysis finds that the disincentive effect of the opening of HSR on firms’ financial asset allocation is mainly found in firms with fewer investment opportunities,higher financing constraints,and located in those regions with poor initial transportation endowment.This paper makes three key contributions to the field.First,this paper provides a logical explanation for promoting firms return to the real economy in terms of the construction of transportation infrastructure.Second,it enriches the study of economic externalities of the opening of HSR from the perspective of financial investment and real economic development.Third,this paper provides a theoretical reference for constructing a unified national market and fostering a new development paradigm with domestic circulation as the mainstay from the perspective of improving transport infrastructure.